No moral high ground when climbers lack compassion

THE DRAMATIC news early yesterday that Australian mountain
climber Lincoln Hall has survived after being pronounced dead at
8700 metres while climbing down from the summit of Mount Everest is
wonderful. But it also brings into stark relief the horror of
British climber David Sharp's lonely death a few days earlier.

The 34-year-old engineer was passed by as many as 40 climbers,
determined to reach the summit, as he lay dying under a rock shelf
from a lack of oxygen.

Some climbers have justified their lack of compassion by saying
Sharp was "effectively dead", whatever that means.

"It was a very hard decision," said New Zealand double amputee
Mark Inglis, one of the few who stopped to help Sharp. "We couldn't
do anything. He had no oxygen, no proper gloves, things like that.
To get David down would have taken 20 sherpas, and he would have
died on the way down."

Rather than being hailed a hero for climbing the world's highest
mountain on prosthetic legs, Inglis has borne the brunt of public
criticism for Sharp's neglect, not least from Everest pioneer and
fellow Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary, who at the age of 86 clearly hasn't
lost grip of his moral compass.

"I haven't seen any evidence so far that this chap hiding under
a rock was in a hopeless condition," Hillary told Television New
Zealand last week. "If he'd been given a little bit of oxygen and
helped down, he might still be alive."

University of Otago scientist Dr Phil Ainslie concurred, saying
Sharp might have been revived enough with bottled oxygen to get him
down the mountain, albeit with considerable effort.

Hillary, with Tenzing Norgay, was the first to climb Everest in
1953. "On my expedition there was no way that you would have left a
man under a rock to die," he said. "It simply would not have
happened. It would have been a disaster from our point of view.

"I don't think it matters a damn if he was from another party,
if he was Swiss or from Timbuktu or whatever. He was a human being,
and we would regard it as our duty to get him back to safety."

Hillary's plain speaking stung and there has been much angry
justification by climbers since of the decision to leave Sharp for
dead.

But as we heard reports yesterday that a rescue team of 12
sherpas was climbing up to Lincoln Hall with a stretcher and more
than 20 bottles of oxygen, you wonder why the same wasn't attempted
for Sharp.

Perhaps it was because he hadn't paid the $75,000 sums some
climbers pay for support, in the highly commercial enterprise
Everest has become.

As Inglis told TVNZ: "You pay a lot of money if you go with a
really good team. And you pay a lot of money for a great
infrastructure." At the very least, why didn't someone stay with
Sharp and hold his hand while he died?

Inglis, who has probably been unfairly targeted because he was
the most famous of the 40 climbers and the only one to speak at
length, hasn't helped his case by trying to offload blame.

"My sherpa sort of just pushed me on," he said in one interview.
"I did everything that I possibly could, which was essentially
nothing . . . I walked past David but only because there were far
more experienced and effective people than myself to help him."

Inglis also said it was his team leader at base camp who told
him over the radio to push on: "Mate, you can't do anything." So he
didn't even try.

In other extreme human endeavours, a failure to render
assistance is regarded as grossly improper, if not manslaughter, as
Richard Purcell, skipper of one of the boats in the disastrous 1998
Sydney to Hobart yacht race, discovered before he was exonerated in
a court settlement. The opprobrium heaped on him for not stopping
to help the dismasted Sword of Orion in impossibly wild weather,
showed how seriously sailors take the fellowship of the sea. But it
seems on Everest, any excuse will do.

Inglis probably isn't as despicable as selective quotes make him
seem. But you do have to wonder how he can reconcile his own
history with his pragmatic attitude towards Sharp.

After all, Inglis lost his legs to frostbite in 1982 when he was
trapped in a snow cave for 14 days during a blizzard while climbing
New Zealand's Mount Cook. Rescuers didn't leave him for dead then.
In fact, they risked their lives to save him, with a New Zealand
Air Force helicopter flipping over as it attempted to land four
rescuers, who then had to be rescued. Another helicopter later
lifted him out.

Perhaps it is too easy to be a Monday morning quarterback about
a situation most of us will never face. But you don't need to have
experienced life above 8500 metres to know the difference between
right and wrong.

It is inexcusable to walk past a dying human being, shrug your
shoulders and tell yourself he wasn't prepared enough, he shouldn't
have climbed alone; if his gloves weren't adequate, or he hadn't
paid enough to climb properly, tough luck.

Reward for recklessness

AUSTRALIAN Crawl guitarist Simon Binks got himself blind drunk
11 years ago, jumped behind the wheel of his Mercedes-Benz and
proceeded to wrap it around a pole in Milsons Point, causing
himself serious brain damage.

Most people would regard the accident as the inevitable result
of his selfish decision to drive with a blood alcohol level of
0.133 - almost three times the legal limit.

But the NSW Supreme Court, which last week awarded Binks
$330,000, ruled that North Sydney Council was at fault for not
providing adequate signage warning of roadworks ahead.

"He had apparently safely driven from Paddington on the night of
the accident," Justice Clifton Hoeben said. "The plaintiff's
driving before the accident did not suggest that he was a reckless
driver or that he ignored road traffic signs."

You do not really need much more proof of Binks's recklessness
and depraved indifference to the lives of others than his decision
to drive eight kilometres from Paddington to Milsons Point while
drunk. He could have caught a cab. He could have drunk mineral
water all night.

The RTA says that with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 a driver is
25 times more likely than a non-drinker to have an accident.

It was a blessing the only person Binks injured was himself and
every penny paid to him by the North Sydney ratepayers whose lives
he endangered is a travesty.

Last week I mistakenly referred to Auburn Boys High in the
column about Bilel Jideh and Geoffrey Lee. Jideh's school was
Granville Boys High. Apologies.